Just finished reading Jack Ellis’ Flyrodding for Bass where he advocates using a 4" plastic worm or plastic lizard for bass. I know Tom Nixon also advocated using plastics, and even spinners (gasp!) while fly fishing (that is my next book to read). How many of you use plastics while fly fishing? Do you find it to be succesful? I am worried about the plastic “lure” tearing up on my backcast. How do you find plastic “lures” hold up on the fly rod? I’m wondering if this could be a fly fishing alternative to the senko and drop-shot rigs that have taken the bass fishing world by storm. I’m thinking I might give some of my old plastic worms, lizards, grubs, and other creatures a try this spring. I hope you’ll forgive this post that some might see as “blaspemy” and share your experiences with me.
Hope you’re not too cold up there. It’s miserable down here along the coast.
I experimented with plastics for awhile. Four-inchers seemed too much for me, unless you’re throwing them with a big rod. Ellis I think recommended anchoring the plastics with a toothpick through the hook eye, or a bit of heavy mono? I found that worked, but never could really get the “feel” for it. I fished plastics for years with bait casting tackle.
What was easier was a pack of mini plastics I found at Wally-World. Easy to rig, even came with tiny worm hooks. Never caught a thing on them, though.
I actually thought Tom’s ideas were more feasible, though I never tried them. The Tom Nixon Spinner is pretty well-proven, according to many. I think Catch Cormier is one of them.
Pardon me if I’m remembering wrong, but didn’t we email once about fishing around Jena? I never made that trip. Either way, maybe we can wet a line together sometime.
We did email about fishing opportunities near Jena. Sorry to hear you haven’t made it up this way. Let me know when you do and we’ll go fishing! Concordia parish has as much water as land!
I’m thinking about using 4 inch plastics on my 7 weight and 2 inch grubs, tubes, and crawfish on my 5 weight. With weightless tubes, worms and senkos so hot for Bass, I think this could be an alternative. We’ll see, I may give some plastics a try this spring.
Kevin, actually I’ve dubbed mine the Heretic. BPS sells a 1" plastic curly tail grub. When rigged with a bead head on a #10 hook, on my waters here in Texas it is so deadly on bluegill and redears it should be outlawed. I use a tapered leader terminated with 4# test mono.
It holds up fine during casting. Just open your loop up some and strive for a smooth transition. Most of mine are destroyed by “short” strikes and wind up loosing their curl.
All the blasphemers are over on some other board somewhere at [url=http://www.self_righteous.com:46abd]www.self_righteous.com[/url:46abd]
Lots of fine upstanding fly anglers use plastic flies, spinners, heck there is even an article somewhere on this site about the fine art of work fishing. And a whole crew of Texans recently committed heresy by dunking minnows on spinning rods when that was all the yellow bass would hit![url=http://www.texasflyreport.com/forums/m_34239/mpage_1/key_minnows/tm.htm#34239:46abd]“forgive us for we have sinned” on Texas Fly Report[/url:46abd]
Heck, I say go after it and let us know how it goes.
I was going to offer the tip of tieing on a hunk of thread and sliding a beadhead down with the thread liberally juiced with glue. Then you simply slide one of those skirt tube things over the top. Someone was advocating that here last year, and I made a couple of 'em up but failed to get them into the water. Having too much fun with the gurgle pops. JGW
I’ve found a good way (I think- remains untested due to the winter) to keep plastics on a hook while fly fishing. The author (can’t remember where I found it) tied several small pieces of 20 lb or other stiff mono on to the hook in such a way as to form barbs to hold the plastic. The mono was tied on the bend end of the hook so that the plastic could slid up on the hook but the open end of the mono served as a barb to hold on the body. Hope that makes some sense (its easy to do but hard to explain). I plan to try it this spring.
nowindknots,
I have some 1" grubs and little plastic crawfish that look to be bream killers. I also have what I call an “ugly bug” also called fiddle legs which are 1/2 inch small plastic bodies with 4 legs that I caught lots of bream on when using as a bettle spin. I can hardly find them now but I still have a few.
rrhyne56,
Glad to know I am not the only blasphemer! My grandfather taught me to fish in the marshes of Southwest Louisiana. We ONLY used a #2 peck’s popper with a 4" creme natural worm with two snelled hooks 2-3 feet below. Always caught a lot of fish and a mixed bag of bass, bream, catfish, and even sac-a-lait (crappie).
white43,
I love gurgle pops too and tye them with 2 strips of faom (double gurgle pops) and hang a jon’s generic or jitterbee or other nymph 18-24 inches behind as a dropper. Works great as a strike indicator and even more fun when I get a double!
Some good ideas I hadn’t thought of. A revolution in warmwater fly fishing at hand?
Wal-Mart had a little kit I bouught of plastics in the shapes of frogs, lizards, minnows and the like. I might have to give it a try in conjunction with some of these ideas!
I’m not much into Ellis (too much gloom and doom for my taste), but I’m a big Tom Nixon advocate. In my experience, regarding soft plastics, a 4"er is about the max for a fly rod lure. Luckily there are boat loads of new plastics coming out that seemed to be made for light tackle. I’ve yet to find a crawfish fly that I really like so I use soft plastics instead. YUM has a 2.5" craw that is great. The Berkley Power Trout Craw is 1" and is pretty good but lacking in the right color of the local crawfish. These craw baits do great for smallmouth fishing. I fish them dead drift to imitate an injured or stray crawdad. Berkley also has a 1" Power Nymph that looks promising.
For plastic worm fishing I like to use L045 1/0 eagle claw hooks. These hooks in the 1/0 size have a more rounded bend than others I’ve found. They are almost like a circle hook. It’s hard to set the hook with a fly rod on a deep fished soft plastic worm. These hooks act MORE like a circle hook and will hook the fish when it turns away from you. That is most of the time. You’ll still deep hook a fish now and then but not as aften as a standard worm hook. I got the idea when I started watching Mark Sosin fish bait with a circle hook. He let the fish set the hook and hardly ever deep hooked a fish. I don’t like to fish with plastic worms because of the gut hooking, and setting the hook issues but this method with the L045 1/0 will help.
Spinner flies/baits and flyrod spoons have a long and grand history as a fly rod lure. I use these lures more often than soft plastics. I have found a great spoon lure that can be easily cast on a fly rod. They sell it at one of the local fly shops and it has incredible action on a fly rod. I can’t remember who makes them off the top of my head. If you’re interested in making a spinner fly check out my [url=http://www.beaversbendflyshop.com/bbs/messages/4431.html:42649]Pete the Rooster page[/url:42649] .
But my all time favorite “nontraditional” fly rod lure is a microjig.
Ditto what Jim, nowindknots, says. I thought I invented that fly but apparantly others use it too. It is an absolute killer on sunfish and small bass. To hold the bead head to the hook, I pack the head with cotton and superglue then superglue the tail on the head. Favorite colors are black and then bubblegum (hot pink) in that order. Like Jim says Bass Pro is the only place I know to get the tails. Look in the panfish or crappie section. The curl tail wiggles just right and drives sunfish crazy.
Hey Kevin - I seem to feel no guilt what so ever when I tie on a Gummy Minnow with a big strike indicator … er, um, I mean bobber … and fish the shad kill on the White and Norfork Rivers this time of year. It sounds odd to me when the same guy who is giving me some grief over a “rubber lure” is fishing the same piece of water with the same “indicator” and a grey/white jig that is just barely light enough to barely heave safely with a 6 weight.
Oh well. I got pretty thick skinned about that stuff years ago, the first time I bought and used some little Sluggos that were 31/2 or 4" long, using them on a 1/0 offset worm hook, unweighted.
First time I used them was on some Redfish down at Port Aransas, and they were so durned deadly, I sidetracked over to a couple of the Hill Country streams on my way back to Dallas. Caught every species available on the Guadelupe and the Blanco and Salado Creek … except Carp and Tilapia. The fishing was so good, I think it took me 4 days to get back to Dallas.
I don’t use 'em much any more ( and I don’t know why), but I ALWAYS have a little stash of the little dears with me.
Longish leader = better action. Fish slow.
Cary
If they arent taking flies, I’ll resort to plastic. I’ve tried worms, senko’s, and small flukes, but the one I keep going back to is a small plastic tube jig. Use it with a tube jig hook and it will not slide of the hook during the cast.
Bass pro makes a nice 2" model that works well on a 1/32oz tube jig head. Think they call it a Squirmin Squirt of something like that. I usually twitch them under a cork, but you can dead drift the, high stick them, or strip them like streamers. Cheers.
Found another site (which of course I can’t find right now) which suggested building up two ramps on either side of a bead to trap it about 2-4 eye lengths from the eye of the hook. Then slide a small plastic sac-a-lait (crappie) tube on over the hook eye and push the hook eye through the plastic. I have made a few of these also and like the way that the bead flares the tube and the weight of the “lure” could be controlled by the size of the bead.
Kevin, I rebuild these at home. Just pull off the old tail, clean the glue residue, and glue on a new tail. No need to discard a perfectly good hook.
Robert, this is the fly I snag most often since I fish it on the bottom a lot. I don’t use the expensive beads sold for fly tying, the smallest size brass beads (BPS again) intended for building spin lures work just fine with a pinched barb Mustad 3906.
For a faster fall rate their smallest clamshell pinch on lead weight is ideal.
Jim
[This message has been edited by nowindknots (edited 03 February 2005).]
I run the site Robin referred to, and saw that some people were visiting from FAOL so I thought I should check it out.
Last year on TFR, hillfisher described his method of using soft plastics in his tying process. Unfortunately when I redesigned the site and moved to a new server I lost the images he had created that described the process. He gave me a few of the flies, and they seem to work pretty well.
I know’s he’s been on this site in the past (even wrote an article or two I believe), so you may be able to PM him here.
Call me a schmeetist, but it sounds like you guys are a bunch or heretics!?!?! I would never get caught with one of those on my flyrod. If I saw ya coming, I’d surely have to ‘snag up and get broke off’ instead!
It actually sounds like it might be a decent idea.
I have also been toying with the idea of foam fly’s on a shorter leader at the end of a sinking line to kinda imitate a drop-shot rig.
I just picked up some Mister Twister 1-1/8 inch “Micro Shad”. I’ve never tried them, but I think I’ll go pester the redears tomorrow.
One note of caution for my fellow rubber heads. If I read the proclamation correctly, in Utah SCENTED rubber jigs would be considered bait, and illegal on artificial lure only waters. Almost all little grubs and such have one of the trademarked scents. You might just check your regs to be sure.
Jim
[This message has been edited by nowindknots (edited 03 February 2005).]
BPS sells a 1" plastic curly tail grub. When rigged with a bead head on a 
I would never get caught with one of those on my flyrod. If I saw ya coming, I’d surely have to ‘snag up and get broke off’ instead!